Their house was not far from the beach, only a ten-minute walk away. But when they reached it, they did not go straight down onto the sand. Instead, they continued along the shore toward the far side of the pier.
There were sand clams to dig up beneath the beach too, but they had to be found. Their beach was quite large, and clams were not scattered everywhere. A few random scoops would not necessarily turn any up.
Sand clams were a type of clam, also called Manila clams. The villagers simply preferred to call them sand clams because they dug them out of the sand.
Despite being dug out of the beach, most had no sand inside them. On the rare occasions when they did, leaving them in water overnight was enough to make them ready to eat.
A few added to soup or noodles made the broth wonderfully sweet and savory.
The villagers did not care for the clams sold in markets in later years. They were nowhere near as fresh as the ones they dug up themselves, and their flesh lacked the springy bite of their sand clams.
Besides, the sand clams on their beach were a little different from the Manila clams sold in markets. They varied in size, with the smallest only as big as a fingernail and the largest matching Manila clams, but even the little ones were plump with meat.
There were two high tides and two low tides every day. Children sometimes dug for fun during ordinary low tides, but far more people came during the especially low tides on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month.
The villagers also preferred to dig beyond the pier. Only on the first and fifteenth did the water recede far enough to expose the beach there. Normally, it remained underwater whether the tide was high or low.
Whenever that stretch was exposed, there were plenty of sand clams beneath it to dig up. The rocks along the shore emerged too, offering tiny clams and oysters to pry off, as well as rock snails to gather.
Those who lived by the mountains lived off the mountains; those who lived by the sea lived off the sea!
Anyone living by the sea would not go hungry if they were willing to put in a little work.
After reaching the pier, they slowly made their way down the steep, rocky slope. By then, the tide had receded enough to expose a small patch of beach, where several women were already crouching and scraping away at the sand.
Foraging along the shore was usually left to the women and children of a household. Ye Yaodong had not come to the seaside for fun since getting married. He was no longer a child, and this beach had long since lost its novelty.
But after being reborn, his state of mind had changed. Perhaps it was the feeling of returning to another era, but the beach seemed a little more fresh and interesting to him now.
He wandered over first to look into the buckets beside the village women. "Anything to dig up? Oh, there really is! How long have you been at it?"
They all kept their heads down, busily scraping the surface of the beach with cooking spatulas. Not one of them paid him any attention.
He was a man who loafed around all day. Did he think they were just like him? Rather than waste time chatting, wouldn't it be better to scrape up a few more scoops?
Ye Yaodong was not annoyed at being ignored. Seeing his son crouching alone on the beach playing with sand, he returned to his wife's side. In that short time, she had already added six or seven sand clams to her basin.
Two more dropped in with a couple of clinks. He crouched down. "You're pretty quick at this."
A cooking spatula was the most practical tool for digging sand clams, bar none!
Some people did not even attach the wooden handle. They simply scraped with the spatula blade.
Lin Xiuqing was using a spatula blade too. Without lifting her head, she said, "Practice makes perfect. Besides, there's no real trick to it. You just scrape the sand."
Well, he had done plenty of this as a child too. For children who grew up by the sea, digging in the sand was their most common pastime.
Since he was already here, he could hardly just watch. With no spatula to dig with, he used his hands instead.
Tiny airholes dotted the sand. Ye Yaodong reached into one at random and pulled out a sand clam. Every attempt yielded one.
Hearing the steady clinking in the basin, Lin Xiuqing glanced sideways at him. That fast?
Ye Yaodong noticed her look and raised his eyebrows at her. "What? Impressed by how good I am? Want me to teach you?"
As he spoke, he dug both hands into the surface of the sand. Another one!
He dropped it into the basin and added, "These things are easy to dig up. I dug plenty of them as a kid."
"How do you find one every single time?" She really was getting curious now.
Although her family lived in the neighboring town, their area was inland, near the mountains.
In the years since marrying into a seaside family, she had always followed her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law, doing whatever they did. She joined them every time they went shore foraging, and everyone scraped through the sand a little patch at a time with a cooking spatula. None of them dug with their hands the way he did.
Ye Yaodong pointed at the tiny holes in the sand. "See these? Sand clams need to breathe too. They breathe through these holes, so wherever there's a hole, there's bound to be one underneath."
He demonstrated as he spoke, pulling out another two.
He was very good at digging into holes.
It was only this easy because the first day of the lunar month was approaching and the tide had just receded from this stretch beside the pier. The middle of the beach was nowhere near as easy to dig.
Curious, Lin Xiuqing tried reaching into a hole herself. Sure enough!
"Then why bother with a spatula? We can just dig them out by hand!" Scraping with a spatula took effort, and after a while, her hands would ache.
"A spatula still comes in handy. Tools make things easier. I'm only using my hands because I don't have one. Some clams are close enough to the surface that they can breathe without little holes. Once people have walked over the sand, you won't be able to see the holes anyway. They're only visible now because the tide has just gone out."
Lin Xiuqing watched him as he spoke. Apart from the period right after their wedding, they had rarely had a normal conversation in all these years. He was always off somewhere, and when he did come home, it was only to eat or sleep. At most, they exchanged a couple of routine questions and answers.
He usually acted so flippantly. Seeing him suddenly speak with such seriousness, and even teach her something, left her feeling rather unaccustomed to it.
"What are you staring at? Get digging!"
"Oh!"
Before long, more people arrived to dig for clams. People in those days were all very hardworking-with the exception of Ye Yaodong.
After crouching and digging for only a short while, he felt his legs starting to go numb. He stood up, twisted his waist, rolled his neck, and looked out at the sea.
Digging for a bit and making a little effort was enough. No need to look too hardworking.
The tide was still going out. Many small boats were moored near the pier, and the falling water had left quite a few stranded on the sand. They would have to wait until the next high tide to return to the sea.
It was half past nine now. Today's tide would probably reach its lowest point at half past ten, then start coming in again. It would be high around half past four in the afternoon, low again at roughly half past eleven that night, and high around seven the next morning.
The tides came about an hour later each day. Although Ye Yaodong had only been reborn that day, one glance at the water told him when tomorrow's high and low tides would be.
No wonder his two older brothers had wanted to come check the tide before taking the boat out. With the first day of the lunar month approaching, the water would recede even farther during the night. They would probably head out around one or two in the morning, when the tide would certainly not have risen very far yet.
Without enough water, the boat could not get out either.
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